Monday, May 3, 2010

Of Windows and Wishbones

I really really like this window system. Snear and call it steampunk if you must, Seth, but I'll always be a sucker for an exposed mechanical control with gears and little whirly things that spin when you turn a crack that moves a 6 ton(!) window sash. Lord Jesus, God in Heaven. It's enough to cure the blind, restore faith to the forsaken and right all wrongs in the world.

Chicken Point Cabin #1
Chicken Point Cabin #2





I love the angle iron flat screen TV shelves photoed in the second link. Crosby Olsen Sundberg Kundig and sometimes Young seem to be doing very cool stuff.


The Brain




The window reminds me of Arthur Ganson, who makes the kind of machines that will one day overthrow us and use our bones and teeth for their minute, pointless tasks.

5 comments:

ButterKnife said...

I will engage your provocation and put on my little monkey show for you forthwith, so that you may be amused and I may exercise the part of me that wants to know why design causes me to have sensation.

Oh sir! you provoke me. That window is great and it is not steampunk. Steampunk takes little bits and/or pieces of previously purposed leather, brass, steel, glass, etc...and re-purposes them to suggest a new functionality. Yet in doing so undermines and deletes the previous function and leaves only the form with no new actual function. A hardcore steampunk practitioner would disassemble a window like this and glue the pieces back together on a jacket or bag as decoration. A steampunk would pretend the gears still worked even though they were just stitched to the surface of a piece of wood. The beauty hidden within the complete original cannot be carried forward by just one of its parts. I mean the beauty of a human being interfacing with the object and that human beings experience.

A bicycle cog set can be a beautiful object by itself but a bicycle cog set glued to a typewriter to make it look like a TOUGH typewriter is miles behind the beauty of a bicycle. By the way, leave the typewriters alone steampunkers. I believe steampunk usurps and confuses the praise earned by a well designed, functional object.

The window you praise, is honest. It opens and closes by a visible mechanism that must be audible to the user as he/she/ze spins the little wheel, which moves something much larger than it seems it should, which exposes a large space all at once to the elements. It must be quite a rush to use. For the blind and forsaken alike.

Ross said...

Amen.

J.J. said...

I love the window Ross, and your blog. What do you think of this design?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak&feature=player_embedded

Anonymous said...

best description of Arthur Ganson's work EVER. beautiful buildings too, they seem like they just want to be filled with lots of interesting people.

Ross said...

JJ, thanks for showing me that link. It's awesome. So few apartments are inspiring, in any way; it's really good to see one that actually looks nice, livable, and is really trying to do something other than cram as many people as possible into a small and profitable a space as they will tolerate. I only wonder what that guy could do with my closet. It'd be a walk-in dance club/youth center in no time.

You might be interested in this PBS series called E2 (E-squared... I can't make the symbol with the text here). They have it at the library. There's some pretty inspiring stuff there AND Brad Pitt narrates it. Can't go wrong.

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